


All the Boys are Smoking Menthols

by thegoodthebadandthenerdy



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: 1990s, Alternate Universe - College/University, Beverly Marsh & Richie Tozier Are Best Friends, Bisexual Richie Tozier, Coming Out, Gen, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, gay things are afoot at the circle k, this is literally just coming out in a convenience store parking lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-29 07:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21406684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoodthebadandthenerdy/pseuds/thegoodthebadandthenerdy
Summary: It's an old ritual: get high, get the munchies, go down to the Circle K, shoot the shit out front while eating whatever snacks they can get when they scrounge their loose change together. But for once they've got something pressing they need to talk about.
Relationships: Beverly Marsh & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier (mentioned)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 35





	All the Boys are Smoking Menthols

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this back in august and then put it away but i keep coming back to it bc i love it sm and i wanted to post more itfic (bc i cant finish any of my half dozen wips apparently) so here we are w my v predictable richie&bev are best friends spiel
> 
> title from fall out boy's where did the party go

Above Bev's head, a loose ballast hums like an electric fence, slow and without interruption, but with an air of caution to be taken. While he waits for her to make a decision on the wrinkled chip bags in front of her, Richie stretches his free arm above his head and tries to touch it.

His other hand, stuffed into the pocket of his jacket, clenches as he comes close enough to feel the heat off the old bulbs on the edges of his ragged fingers. He slides his eyes from the bulb itself to the almost blue light it casts over his skin, lighting his veins like a match to a gas spill. He never did tan.

Eventually, that loses his interest, and he collapses back onto the balls of his feet as he shoves his hand in his other pocket, returning instead to watching Bev in that way that makes her swat at him without looking over her shoulder. As if on cue she reels her arm back, the strap of her tank top sliding over the density of freckles there, and smacks his chest.

"Hey, asshole. Take a picture, it'll last longer," she shoots from around her thumbnail, smile half cracked as she finally makes her choice of off-brand Doritos. Flavor: a drawing of canned cheese. He shudders for effect, ducking his face over her shoulder and shaking feeling all the way down to his and her toes until she presses her palm over his features and shoves him, telling him to fuck off in the exact same tone she'd been using since they met. Well, since a few weeks after they met, once she realized he was only ninety-five percent shit talk; the other five percent, as it turned out, really went a long way in endearing him to people.

They make it through checkout without difficulty, leaving behind the harsh lights and the buzz of drink coolers and the racks upon racks of colorful, stale product stuffed into the too small square footage for the quiet landing pad outside. 

Bev slumps down first on the concrete, one leg pulled under her as the other braces against the flaking parking bumper. The flannel around her waist splays around her like wings, and her rolled up jeans scuff the asphalt, but she doesn't seem to notice either, instead wriggling around until she's comfortable. She taps the dingy white canvas of her sneakers impatiently as she waits for him to join her.

He makes a production of folding all the limbs he still hasn't grown into in on themselves to sit beside her, leaning hard against her side just to rile her up. She shoulders him away and sets to working open her bag of chips, keeping him back with the threat of a dry elbow that pokes into his ribs any time he gets too close.

The pop it opens with is anticlimactic, but they play it like an explosion, throwing themselves back from it in tandem before sitting back up streaking laughter.

She dives in, crunching through each chip with half-lidded eyes. Knock-off food, no nutritional value in sight, but the nectar of the gods to slightly drunk (and definitely high, don't tell his mother) college students. After her first handful she tips the mouth of the bag to him as she brushes her hair back from her forehead with two fingers, the others, stained in synthetic cheese, arched away from her curls.

They're longer than he can ever remember seeing them, nowhere near how it'd been when she first came around, but he thinks if he tugs on one it'll unfurl down to her nose. 

"Don't you fucking dare, Tozier," she deadpans, jerking her bag back and undoing a smile, leaving him dropping measly crumbs from his allotted handful onto the concrete. 

She always could read his mind; it used to freak him out when they were kids, but now he appreciates it--uses it to his advantage to make her voice jump an octave from time to time, but appreciates it nonetheless.

He braces the back of his hand against his thigh, picking chips from it and uncaring where their crumbs haphazardly fall. He would have been content to sit in that silence--and they did, even long after she'd folded up her bag and slid it into her pocket--but he could sense, on the edge of his skewed perception, that there was something on the tip of her tongue (that wasn't the ball from the tongue piercing he'd dared her to get.)

And it wasn't like he didn't have a clue, or that he hadn't been dangerously careening toward this conversation anyway with every loose-lipped thing he'd said lately out of some masochistic want to get this over with, but every bit of bravado he'd collected in his years had deserted him when confronted with the possibility of--what? He didn't want to think about it, and hadn't since he'd clambered out of that bathroom and roped Bev into taking a few hits from the first joint they could find.

Because he didn't know what this looked like, had tried to allow himself to picture it once and immediately thrown up. Had tried a time after that and ended up rubbing his eyes and fingertips raw.

And he'd thought, maybe, it'd be easier because it was Bev. Bev Marsh who had seen him at each higher-than-high high and painstakingly brutal low. Bev Marsh who he'd taken to junior prom and then promptly taken everywhere else in life with him. Bev Marsh who had been a better friend to him than he'd ever fucking been to her and ever would be, or at least that was how he saw it. 

But maybe that was it. Maybe his little Grinch heart had swollen too many sizes, and he couldn't get the words out not because he was a coward--despite everything he'd ever told himself, despite everything that had ever been told to him--but because he cared too much.

Yeah, it sounded like fucking bullshit to him, too. Cowardly bullshit.

"Richie," she finally says, knees holding up her forearms, hands holding up her face to look at the stars. She looks impossibly young in that moment, and a vice grabs his throat. He tips backward, back flat and legs steepled and eyes looking anywhere that isn't at her because he can't let himself break.

He spent so many years not saying it, keeping a store of unspoken words that rise and fall between joking and as serious as he can bring himself to be on any given day, that it feels wrong to say anything. What a waste, right? What a betrayal to that smart-mouthed kid who lived in such acute fear that scared shitless should have been his job title and he should be collecting pension right now.

He still lives in homage to that kid, the one whose hands shook on that stupid pocket knife he still has in his lop-sided nightstand drawer to this day. He still has his face and his glasses and his sneer, still has his crudeness and his comic collection and his hard-set boundaries.

Still has his taste, too, but that's a burden for another Circle K parking lot, maybe another confidant all together. Or maybe not, who knows what cloud his head will drift to if he can just manage to get it out.

He closes his eyes, not that she could see, and unfurls his mouth into that practice makes perfect snark. "You walk in as I score the winning shot in tonsil hockey with the captain of the men's hockey team and suddenly you're not a sports fan."

"Jesus, Richie," she exhales into a false start laugh, running her hand back over her forehead, holding her hair out of her face. Her other hand reaches out and clamps around his knee, a silent squeeze of reassurance before it's gone.

"We didn't leave room for him, no. I'll try to remember that next time some guy has his hand on my ass in your study buddy's bathroom."

He can watch her try to hold her laughter in, watch it tuck her in from rounded chin to her offset eyebrows until it finally wrinkles her forehead and she can't keep it in any longer. He can't bring himself to laugh with her just yet, but he finds some notion of comfort in the fact that he knows she's not laughing at him.

The sound dies off eventually, and he thinks they're done, but after a long pause, her mouth curled up like she might think better of it, she finally says, "You know, he looked a lot like Eddie."

For his part, he didn't think she'd actually say it, but that's on him. Never underestimate her, over shots or hits or resolve. He wonders if she'll ever let him borrow some of that--if it'd even make a difference or if he'd be the same weaselly little shit he'd always been.

"Yeah, well, they all fucking do." He doesn't mean to say it, but he doesn't even miss a beat either, and that's what weights his tongue the most. It's not even bitter, just resigned. 

She hums, some kind of something there, he doesn't even know, doesn't even try to pretend to understand. Eyeing him down the bridge of her nose, she seems to make up her mind, though.

"Let's go home and watch HSN and try not to buy another fucking knife set," she says definitively, standing up to brush nonexistent dust and dirt off herself. There's no room for argument and he appreciates it because he doesn't have any more fight in him tonight. "We're getting too old to sit out here 'til Robbie runs us off, anyway."

His eyes open, hazy and unfocused from how tight they'd been squeezed shut, or how little oxygen your brain gets when you don't breathe, he isn't sure, but there she is above him as sturdy as ever, not a single thing changed in the way she looks at him.

"Or are you staying here all night, Trashmouth?" she asks, hand outstretched, eyebrow cocked, eyes as far away as he is. For a second he's thirteen years old again, and for that fraction of time it doesn't hurt.

Their hands snap together and she hauls him up with the other behind her back, grinning at him once he's up to full height, her hair wild and her cheeks flushed. He reaches out, making like he's going to brush a piece of hair behind her ear until the last second when he flicks the shell with all his might.

His reward is a sharp smack that he feels all the way through his jacket and accompanying t-shirt and another whole-body laugh that follows them all the way home like a stray.

**Author's Note:**

> i like to think abt a week later bev, also bi, comes out to richie and they have a good laugh abt it :^)
> 
> i'm on tumblr @foxmulldr !!


End file.
